## Facts

- Maria Siragusa worked as a nurse’s aide at Swedish Hospital for about three months.
- Around 6 a.m., she entered a six-patient ward to provide morning care and closed the door for privacy.
- A washbasin was mounted on the wall behind the door and within the door’s swing; Siragusa stood at the basin to fill it.
- The inside of the door had a protruding metal forearm hook used to open the door from within.
- A patient in a wheelchair pushed the door open; the hook struck Siragusa in the upper back, causing injuries requiring hospitalization.
- Siragusa alleged the hospital failed to provide a reasonably safe workplace due to the basin’s location and the hook’s design/placement.
- The hospital denied negligence and asserted contributory negligence and assumption of risk.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence established, as a matter of law, that Siragusa assumed the risk of injury, permitting dismissal without submitting the case to the jury.
2. Whether there was sufficient evidence of employer negligence in the room’s structural arrangement and door hardware to require jury determination.
3. What limitation on an assumption-of-risk instruction applies in an employer–employee negligence case on retrial.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court reversed the dismissal and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held assumption of risk was not established as a matter of law; the record presented factual questions for the jury.
- On retrial, the jury must be instructed that Siragusa assumed only dangers ordinarily incident to her work, except those resulting from the employer’s negligence, if any.

## Legal Principles

- An employer must exercise reasonable care to furnish employees a reasonably safe place to work, including reasonably safe structural arrangements and avoidance of unnecessary hazards.
- In employment cases, an employee assumes the ordinary dangers incident to the work, but does not assume risks created by the employer’s negligence unless the employee knowingly and voluntarily encounters them.
- When reasonable minds could differ on whether a workplace risk was ordinary or instead attributable to employer negligence, assumption of risk is a question for the jury and should not be resolved by dismissal as a matter of law.
- In reviewing dismissal for insufficient evidence, courts view the evidence and reasonable inferences most favorably to the plaintiff.

## Conclusion

The court held that the alleged hazard from the door swing and protruding hook raised jury questions on employer negligence and on whether the risk was merely an ordinary incident of the job; it therefore reversed the dismissal and required a retrial with an assumption-of-risk instruction limited to ordinary job dangers and excluding employer negligence.


Siragusa v. Swedish Hosp., 60 Wash. 2d 310, 373 P.2d 767 (1962)